According to the 2009 Kaiser Family Foundation report ( Lai, Khaddage, and Knezek, 2013), children in the United States from the ages of 8-18 spent 90 minutes per day in 2009 texting; 82 minutes per day participating in voice communications, listening to music, playing games, or watching media; and 90 minutes per day participating in social networking. This equates to 262 minutes or 4.5 hours using technology outside of the formal educational arena. Grant and Barbour (2013) report 83% of 17-year-olds, 75% of teenagers, and 58% of 12-year-olds in the United States own a cell phone. With this many students owning cell phones who use them for a wide variety of communication, allowing them to utilize these skills in the classroom seems as logical as allowing students to continue using crayons in art and pencils in class when these tools are used outside the classroom years before they first step into formal education.
Many schools have policies of prohibiting cell phones in the schools due to the disruption they would make in the classroom. However, with data as previously mentioned many schools have decided to take advantage of this available technology and use it in the classroom using the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs.
Implementing a BYOD program may seem simple at first glance assuming that students just bring in their devices and classroom instruction would continue as normal. There are many considerations in establishing a BYOD program. There is data to gather, stakeholders to persuade, broadband widths to increase, legalities to review, new policies to make, lesson planning to change, and educators to train.
Before a school system implements a BYOD program, some data needs to be collected. For example, a survey of the number of students who own mobile devices such as cell phones, tablets, or electronic notebooks, or laptops. This data will help determine a starting point. For some districts it is possible that this data will determine that not enough students own their own mobile devices to start. Research may need to ensue to find a resource to assist in acquiring tablets or other mobile devices.
Parents/guardians, teachers, and the district and school administrations have to be invested into the BYOD development (Parsons, 2012). In some districts, the county administration may need to be involved in dealing with the school budget. Parents/guardians need to have a voice in the decision making since their child will be directly affected if they do not have the luxury of owning a personal mobile device. According to the 2010 census, 22% of children in the United States, or 16.4 million children, live in poverty; children of color experience higher rates of poverty than do Caucasian children, 18% of children have one unemployed or underemployed parent, and 1.6 million children are homeless (Adams, 2012). Teachers not only need to be concerned about lesson planning and implementation, they also need to be concerned with ensuring all the students have equal access to the technology. This is also a burden for the district and school administrators.
A team of information technology Subject Matter Experts (SME) needs to be involved to research and present any possible upgrades within the school system infrastructure to account for the increased number of devices (Parsons, 2012) and all the supports that go along with this. Parsons (2012) counsels that using a wireless network that provides adequate coverage and speed for the estimated large number of devices that are used simultaneously is a basic necessity for upgrading the network infrastructure. Other infrastructure items include teacher’s devices and professional development, software purchases for the students, and software purchase for the learning management system (Parson, 2012; Lennon, 2012). Software license management needs to be included (Lennon, 2012). Cyber security and data management software needs to be researched, purchased, and implemented as well as adequately maintained (Evans, 2014).
Acquiring and maintaining legal counsel is required to ensure the rights and privacy of the students and the school system are upheld throughout the BYOD program (Evans, 2014). Stakeholders need to ensure that the school system has clear and practical policies, security measures are in place to ensure private confidential personal information stays secure, and a clear and precise explanation of how the school uses information obtained through this program (Evans, 2014).
Any BYOD implementation will require an increase in monetary spending. The specific amount is determined by the needs. Throughout the course of a year, once the initial investment is done, the annual renewals or upgrades will be minimal (Parsons, 2012). Because the student is supplying their own hardware, the budgetary line item cost of hardware for items such as desktops computers and the peripherals (mouse and keyboard) or laptops are dramatically reduced if not eliminated (Parsons, 2012). Therefore, technical support costs and maintenance will be reduced (Parsons, 2012). Some schools may be able to eliminate an old computer lab (Parsons, 2012) opening that space for other instruction.
Implementation of F/OSS
For BYOD to work Open Source Software (OSS) is required whether the OSS is from a private “cloud” or a public “cloud.” In regards to K-12 education sites with limited funds, Free Open Source Software (F/OSS) is best since there are no fees associated with its use.
Online education institutions, such as college and universities, use F/OSS or a combination of this with private OSS. For example, Lennon (2012) describes the blended setup at the Letterkenny Institute of Technology (LYIT) in Ireland. LYIT uses the Blackboard learning management system on a public “cloud” (Lennon, 2012). Many United States universities and colleges use Blackboard, as well. The public “cloud” is used for storage allowing each student to have a 25GB storage folder on SkyDrive (Lennon, 2012) which at the writing of this review, the OneDrive.
Moodle (https://moodle.org) is another example of an OSS learning management system (Bansode and Kumbhar, 2012). From the Moodle website, it proclaims that Moodle operates from funds provided by 60 partners worldwide allowing Moodle users free access and usage. The stakeholders will need to discuss their needs and the options that will meet those needs with the technical SMEs to ensure the school district is investing time, effort, and capital wisely.
Implementing BYOD and F/OSS in the K-12 Classroom
Once decided to use BYOD and which F/OSS or OSS learning management systems to use, many instructional options can be used inside the classroom. Kiger, Herro, and Prunty (2012) suggest one-to-one computing that not only use laptops or tablets, but can use smartphones. Many schools use Apple products such as iPad tablets that can access e-reading, calculating, mapping, Internet browsing, and gaming (Kiger, Herro & Prunty, 2012) specifically designed for easy use for young children.
Many classrooms are trying the Flipped classroom design which focuses on Internet use at home to view the lectures or complete the reading assignment and notes (Kiger, Herro & Prunty, 2012). When the students arrive in class the following day, questions from the night before are answered and practice sessions commence (Kiger, Herro & Prunty, 2012). The arts and other academic are not omitted from this new technology. The use of iPods, another Apple product, allow music, video and audio downloads (Kiger, Herro & Prunty, 2012).
Many schools have policies of prohibiting cell phones in the schools due to the disruption they would make in the classroom. However, with data as previously mentioned many schools have decided to take advantage of this available technology and use it in the classroom using the Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) programs.
Implementing a BYOD program may seem simple at first glance assuming that students just bring in their devices and classroom instruction would continue as normal. There are many considerations in establishing a BYOD program. There is data to gather, stakeholders to persuade, broadband widths to increase, legalities to review, new policies to make, lesson planning to change, and educators to train.
Before a school system implements a BYOD program, some data needs to be collected. For example, a survey of the number of students who own mobile devices such as cell phones, tablets, or electronic notebooks, or laptops. This data will help determine a starting point. For some districts it is possible that this data will determine that not enough students own their own mobile devices to start. Research may need to ensue to find a resource to assist in acquiring tablets or other mobile devices.
Parents/guardians, teachers, and the district and school administrations have to be invested into the BYOD development (Parsons, 2012). In some districts, the county administration may need to be involved in dealing with the school budget. Parents/guardians need to have a voice in the decision making since their child will be directly affected if they do not have the luxury of owning a personal mobile device. According to the 2010 census, 22% of children in the United States, or 16.4 million children, live in poverty; children of color experience higher rates of poverty than do Caucasian children, 18% of children have one unemployed or underemployed parent, and 1.6 million children are homeless (Adams, 2012). Teachers not only need to be concerned about lesson planning and implementation, they also need to be concerned with ensuring all the students have equal access to the technology. This is also a burden for the district and school administrators.
A team of information technology Subject Matter Experts (SME) needs to be involved to research and present any possible upgrades within the school system infrastructure to account for the increased number of devices (Parsons, 2012) and all the supports that go along with this. Parsons (2012) counsels that using a wireless network that provides adequate coverage and speed for the estimated large number of devices that are used simultaneously is a basic necessity for upgrading the network infrastructure. Other infrastructure items include teacher’s devices and professional development, software purchases for the students, and software purchase for the learning management system (Parson, 2012; Lennon, 2012). Software license management needs to be included (Lennon, 2012). Cyber security and data management software needs to be researched, purchased, and implemented as well as adequately maintained (Evans, 2014).
Acquiring and maintaining legal counsel is required to ensure the rights and privacy of the students and the school system are upheld throughout the BYOD program (Evans, 2014). Stakeholders need to ensure that the school system has clear and practical policies, security measures are in place to ensure private confidential personal information stays secure, and a clear and precise explanation of how the school uses information obtained through this program (Evans, 2014).
Any BYOD implementation will require an increase in monetary spending. The specific amount is determined by the needs. Throughout the course of a year, once the initial investment is done, the annual renewals or upgrades will be minimal (Parsons, 2012). Because the student is supplying their own hardware, the budgetary line item cost of hardware for items such as desktops computers and the peripherals (mouse and keyboard) or laptops are dramatically reduced if not eliminated (Parsons, 2012). Therefore, technical support costs and maintenance will be reduced (Parsons, 2012). Some schools may be able to eliminate an old computer lab (Parsons, 2012) opening that space for other instruction.
Implementation of F/OSS
For BYOD to work Open Source Software (OSS) is required whether the OSS is from a private “cloud” or a public “cloud.” In regards to K-12 education sites with limited funds, Free Open Source Software (F/OSS) is best since there are no fees associated with its use.
Online education institutions, such as college and universities, use F/OSS or a combination of this with private OSS. For example, Lennon (2012) describes the blended setup at the Letterkenny Institute of Technology (LYIT) in Ireland. LYIT uses the Blackboard learning management system on a public “cloud” (Lennon, 2012). Many United States universities and colleges use Blackboard, as well. The public “cloud” is used for storage allowing each student to have a 25GB storage folder on SkyDrive (Lennon, 2012) which at the writing of this review, the OneDrive.
Moodle (https://moodle.org) is another example of an OSS learning management system (Bansode and Kumbhar, 2012). From the Moodle website, it proclaims that Moodle operates from funds provided by 60 partners worldwide allowing Moodle users free access and usage. The stakeholders will need to discuss their needs and the options that will meet those needs with the technical SMEs to ensure the school district is investing time, effort, and capital wisely.
Implementing BYOD and F/OSS in the K-12 Classroom
Once decided to use BYOD and which F/OSS or OSS learning management systems to use, many instructional options can be used inside the classroom. Kiger, Herro, and Prunty (2012) suggest one-to-one computing that not only use laptops or tablets, but can use smartphones. Many schools use Apple products such as iPad tablets that can access e-reading, calculating, mapping, Internet browsing, and gaming (Kiger, Herro & Prunty, 2012) specifically designed for easy use for young children.
Many classrooms are trying the Flipped classroom design which focuses on Internet use at home to view the lectures or complete the reading assignment and notes (Kiger, Herro & Prunty, 2012). When the students arrive in class the following day, questions from the night before are answered and practice sessions commence (Kiger, Herro & Prunty, 2012). The arts and other academic are not omitted from this new technology. The use of iPods, another Apple product, allow music, video and audio downloads (Kiger, Herro & Prunty, 2012).